Euro Trip Part 12: Croatia

Croatia Travel Blog

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17th August 2007

Zagreb, Croatia (euro trip part 12)

Current mood: Quiet

Category: Travel and Places

Another journey by train meant another chance to snooze to catch up on some much needed sleep and as a result we very nearly missed our stop and carried on to Ljubljana – which wouldn’t have been an bad idea if we knew what lay in store for us in Zagreb. Fuck all basically.

We just happened to arrive on the one big religious day and so everything was closed, and I mean absolutely bloody everything. Zagreb was deader than a bank holiday Sunday falling on Christmas Day with the local army ordering a mass evacuation of the city thrown in. A slight exaggeration you may think but it was fucking quiet – and the worst part of all this was we were missing a beer festival in Belgrade for this. So it was Mands and I wandered around an empty city not much different to that fella at the beginning of the movie 28 Days Later. We ended up so bloody bored Mands and I decided to learn gymnastics in the park. I did really well with some wonky handstands, sometimes managing to land back on my feet too, whereas Mands could only manage to pull of several cartwheels finished with a back flip. And to think she used to do gymnastics, huh.

Bored senseless, we decided to have some chill time back at the hostel but they only went and turfed us out because it was ‘policy’ not to have people hanging around after 2pm. The same hostel whose policy was to provide free tea and coffee yet couldn’t even turn out a spoon for us. It’s a shite hostel although I do recognise I may be biased towards it, it would be unfair for me to name it. It’s called Buzz Hostel and you’ll avoid it on the street Dordiceva 24/111

So what did we have to look forward to in Zagreb then? Well, there was something that had me jumping with excitement when I was first told about it back in Poland by the Northerners Emma and Jo: Khazi’s. That’s a toilet if you haven’t grasped that already. And not just any khazi either, these were special ones at Zagreb’s bus station. Mechanical they are, so once you dropped the kids off at the pool the khazi automatically cleaned itself – all a bit Transformers like except it was a pan instead of some killer robots, or whatever they are. I haven’t seen the movie yet, okay? Anyroad, I get there all excited and eagerly pay the toilet lady 3 Kuna for the entrance fee and was bitterly disappointed to discover the khazi was your typical bog standard toilet, if you excuse thepun. The experience was shit, if you excuse that pun too. Feeling a tad upset and ripped of, I did pay 3 Krona after all, I left the khazi and soon realized I was at the train station and not the bus station where I was supposed to be. I did think of doing the 15 minute walk up to the central train station to give it another go but I figured I used all my ammo on the last attempt, so I left it.